When films are a mirror to your reality

There is a film I have now watched twice. I cried both times. To understand how out of the ordinary this is, you have to understand that I never watch films. I cannot focus long enough. The only way I ever manage to watch anything (including study videos and youtube shorts) is by using something to fidget with. It might be a phone game, or scribbling on paper, or knitting while watching. Anything that gives me that secondary focus that allows me to focus on whatever I am watching. And yet this film I watched all the way through, twice, without needing that fidget.

I also rarely cry, at least on the outside. This film had me in tears throughout, both times. At first I wasn’t sure what it was that made me cry, until it dawned on me that this film talked about everything that is important to me. To explain it, I need to tell you about the film.

Feel My Voice (available on Netflix right now) is an Italian film. The original title was ‘Te lo leggo negli occhi’ which translates as ‘I can see it in your eyes’, and yes, I did use Google Translate. My Italian is not up to that level yet.

The film tells the story of the only hearing child in a Deaf family. What makes the film special is that it shows the Deaf culture as equally important and amazing, but different. I have a long history with the Deaf as long, long ago my father, as church elder, arranged for a separate church service for deaf people, after they explained to him that they were unable to follow the usual service. At that moment I became aware of not only deaf people, but Deaf culture.

The film feels a metaphor for the struggle I see in ADHD/nonADHD couples all the time. It talks of ableism and internal ableism: The idea that the ‘normal’ is superior. All of us are exposed to modern day culture, with its focus on deficits when it comes to neurodivergence. All of us neurodivergent have had the thousands and thousands of criticisms that have lodged inside our souls and have made us feel less than, deficit, critical of ourselves, and have turned our differences into personal failings.

This internal ableism is shown in this film by the way the parents depend on the main character, the hearing girl, and take much longer to accept her brother (who is deaf) as equally capable. This even though the father is campaigning to become mayor of the town. It shows how insidious these beliefs are.

I cried for myself, for the phrases my internal critic still launches at me all the time. Logically I know they are not true, and yet they still hit me when I feel low.

I cried for all neurodivergent people who feel less than, even though they are very much equal to, and in roughly 50% of the time better than. Please know that your internal critic can be lessened. Not erased, but become much quieter.  I can help.

I cried for the partners, the parents, and the children of neurodivergent people, who feel they have to take the lionshare of the mental load because there is that assumption that they have to. That they are the only ones who can. Please know that it is not necessary. I can help there too.

I cried for the children who are building that inner critic. The ones who are always told to try harder. The ones who are expected to be able to do things where their brains have not yet developed that ability. It will come, but by then they will assume they are deficit, less than, not capable enough. They may never recognise that they have morphed into that beautiful butterfly. They will assume they are still the caterpillar that cannot fly.

Know that self-esteem, agency (the knowledge that you have the ability), and confidence are the most important of anything you can give people. Trust us. Believe in us. We are worth it.